New York Times (Circulation: 1,133,763)A Bridge Too FatResearchers at Lehigh University made a prototype of the proposed steel deck on the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge. Over nine months, they simulated the effects of a truck passing over the deck 239 million times. That amounts to about 175 years of traffic, about a century longer than the 75-year minimum life span for the new, post-diet bridge. Over the decades, the 65-year-old suspension bridge has been bulked up to make it more stable. But now engineers have decided that it has grown too beefy.click here

Arab News (Saudi Arabia)Dar Al-Hekma to Tie Up With US UniversityDar Al-Hekma Private Girls’ College will today sign a mutual cooperation agreement with Lehigh University for the college’s academic and scientific development. The agreement will be signed by the executive director of foreign relations for Lehigh University, Roland Yoshida, and the chairman of Dar Al-Hekma’s board of directors, Zuhair Fayez. This new agreement is another step forward for the college in its mission to prepare well-qualified Saudi women for the job market. The agreement between the two institutions is for five years during which the university and the college will cooperate on developing curriculum, exchanging expertise and information, conducting research and facilitating scholarships for students to complete post-graduate studies.click here

Science News (Circulation: 158,894)When Mountains FizzDork Sahagian, professor of earth and environmental science at Lehigh, was mentioned in an article about what makes some volcanic eruptions so explosive. By looking for similarities among different models of volcanoes, Sahagian identified what geophysicists generally agree are the important factors influencing eruptions. Those parameters also form a volcanologist’s wish list of where future experimentation and analysis should be focused, he proposed at an AGE meeting in Montreal. Ironically, even though the amount of dissolved gases in magma is one of the most important factors in determining whether any particular eruption will be a Mount St. Helens-size boom or a Kilauean bust, scientists know little about how bubbles of gas form inside molten rock, Sahagian notes.(no link)

Journal News (Circulation: 142,145)Bush Proclaims Election a SuccessHenri Barkey, chair of the international relations department at Lehigh, was quoted in an article about the recent Iraq vote. “They realize that the quickest way to get the United States out of Iraq is to create a new government,” said Barkey, former State Department policy planning staffer. “Not to vote would mean a continuation of the status quo. So the election is not a vindication of U.S. policy.” The high voter turnout, despite violent efforts by insurgents to quash it, appeared to validate, at least in the short term, his policy of spreading democracy first to Iraq and then, hopefully, throughout the Middle East — a gamble that Bush's presidential legacy may hinge upon. (no link)